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I grew up with cactus plants! Not the kind that grows in the desert, but smaller versions. I can always look up what kinds I had, if you're interested. They're very easy to handle. They're very forgiving, you can forget about giving them water for a few days and still come back to them alive, and some of them don't look too shabby either. And the small ones don't sting that bad if you touch them... I was probably a little older than 4 when I got mine though. But still, throwing that idea out there!

Are you talking about the Abrahamic god specifically? I'm of the opinion that you don't need to believe in fairy tales or dismiss common sense to believe in a god, even though they sometimes might seem a bit incompatible. However, to take the Bible literally would require you to ignore quite a lot of reality.

According to a site devoted to growing eyelashes (or so it seems, linked below), the length of the eyelashes depend on a number of factors, only one of which is the genetic one. While genetics take you so far, a healthy livestyle and sound diet come a long way to growing long eyelashes. Also, I think there's the chance that the genes for short eyelashes are recessive and you both had those dormant, but a biologist would be better versed in explaining that bit. http://www.grow-eyelash.com/ (the above site isn't scientific, so take all of it with a pinch of salt)

Of course it's socialistic. Don't forget, we've had public healthcare for ages! Such a ruling would, of course, require the hikers to be responsible. Luckily, most of the people interested in hiking have been brought up with organisations such as the boy/girl scouts or other wildlife organisations, so have a basic understanding of nature and how not to wreck it. And they understand that, if abused, this right goes away. As long as the better part of hikers understand that, there's no problem.

In Sweden, we have something called "everybody's right" (very loosely translated), which basically gives anyone the right to set up a camp on someone else's property, provided they don't ruin anything and pick up their trash. Also, this goes for non-private locations, so you can't put up a tent in someone's backyard. But go hiking in the woods and spend the night, no problem. This hasn't caused any problem whatsoever, since pretty much everybody who does this are careful not to ruin the fun for everyone else. How it would work in a bigger country with a bigger number of hikers though, I can't tell.

I'm going to put together a new rig in a month or two (when I get my tax returns!). I've pasted the specs I had in mind below, so feel free to comment on anything other than what I'm asking. My biggest concern right now is the motherboard. The reason I picked that one is due to it having EFI, 6 GB/s SATA, 2xPCI-E and supporting 1600 MHz memory. However, knowing approximately nothing about motherboards, I don't know if it's the best choice in that price range, or even if it's at all decent. I'm going to use the computer for gaming, thus the graphics card. Future plans involve getting another GTX 560 to run SLI, as well as maybe overclocking the processor. However that's not of any immediate concern. Also, I want it to be somewhat future proof (if there's such a thing). I want it to respond swiftly no matter what I do, thus getting a somewhat more expensive rig than might be necessary. I haven't included any prices, as I can imagine it varies quite a bit around the world. Here, the total would be 11500 SEK, which is equal to £1143/$1909/€1286. And I would prefer not to go too far beyond that. So, would the motherboard be a reasonable choice? Also, what bottlenecks, if any, can you find in the system? Any further pointers would be appreciated. Case Fractal Design Define R3 Titanium Grey Mobo ASUS P8P67 PRO, Socket-1155 CPU Intel Core i7 Quad Processor i7-2600k PSU Corsair TX V2 750W PSU GPU MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti 1GB PhysX RAM Kingston DDR3 HyperX 1600MHz 8GB HDD Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB DVD Samsung DVD+/-RW Burner, SH-S222A SSD OCZ Vertex 3 120GB

I can imagine it's very different in countries whose national language is a big one, like English or French. But back home, we started English classes when we were 10 I think, and nowadays they start at age 7. It really does help a lot to learn a foreign language, and EVERYBODY speaks English here. Maybe not fluently, but good enough to get around. On top of that, we start learning a third language at age 13 (I think). Mostly either German or French, though there's an option to go with Spanish as well. Wouldn't want to change that either.

If ghosts are shown to be a real phenomena, I would say there's a higher chance of them being "footprints", as you call it, rather than dead relatives. I'm not knowing enough to say anything about the dimension issue, unfortunately. I've never seen one, but considering they evolved on another planet and don't share our genome, we can be quite sure they look nothing at all like us.

To be perfectly frank, there's not a lot I would change about our school system (Sweden). While there was a lot of it that was boring back then, I did get a very broad foundation and feeling for what the world looks like. Others might disagree, but I'm quite happy with how I was educated.

Having grown up with a mother who cultivated chicken, I can confirm this. They can't, for instance, fly south for the winter, but they can extend their jumps by quite a bit by flapping their wings. I once heard a rumor of a chicken who had its head chopped off, and its death-throes caused it to fly up and land on the roof of the barn. But maybe that was a bit too much info. As for re-evolving arms, I think it depends on which bird it is. An ostrich, for example, can't fly and really doesn't use its wings for anything as far as I know. When it comes to those, I can imagine there's pretty much no evolutionary advantage to having arms. But then we have the penguin. I'm not sure if it uses its wings for swimming, but even if they don't, they're using it to shove their kids around, and keep those warm. I'm no expert, but I can see some potential there. But I guess they're as likely to evolve fins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Miller His personal site, I think: http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/

Here's a link explaining that. There's no doubt humans evolved from primates, not the other way around. And to clear up, spice = species

Relevance? A man made dam is not proof that the garden of Eden is a fact. It only proves man existed to build it (and I assume even that can be philosophically challenged).

Assuming I'm not making any logical errors, I see just that. Will see if I can put it into words. If we assume an omnipotent being, since it would know the future in every sense, wouldn't it be static in the sense that it knows what's going to happen, and it knows its own reaction to whatever is to happen? So, since I guess this deity would encompass all of time and space, is it wrong to look at it as being locked in its own space-time, thus static?

iTunes has a "free" section. http://www.apple.com/itunes

Yeah, nothing but random patterns, I'd say. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia I never saw any male genitalia either. But then, I didn't see any of the things mentioned in the video.

This video might be relevant. Most of it is off-topic as far as this topic goes, but the punchline is spot on.

Are you saying that the story of Adam and Eve are not to be taken literally, but is simply describing the society of people that God created? Is this what Jews believe? I'm not too read-up on the differences between the creation myths of Christianity and Judaism. Is God not omnipotent?

I'm curious how we would send the asteroid our way. I won't even pretend to understand the math at this point, but wouldn't a nuclear blast mostly dissipate into space, wasting most of the "push"? While probably taking a wee bit longer, how would a "gravity tractor" hold up against that method? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16788616/ns/technology_and_science-space/ Also, an asteroid is quite massive. What if we miss the moon and send the asteroid tumbling down here? It's not like the thing has breaks!

I'm also curious about this one. It seems to be to be a false cause.

Looking quickly at the following link, here's a solution that might work. Try it out and get back if it doesn't. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsdesktopsearchhelp/thread/53f6e6e0-89f0-47d8-a812-3a7d7c7e4c63

The blonde gene is recessive (if that's the word in English) while dark hair is dominant. I think red hair is dominant over blonde as well. Now, remembering that there are 2 genes (please correct me if I'm using the wrong terminology) controlling hair colour, it's possible that the blonde gene has been lying dormant in both the father's and the mother's family for a few generations. And suddenly, the recessive gene from both parents (in this case blonde) is given to the baby, which ends up with blonde hair. This might be a scientifically crap explanation, but yes it's possible it's still your child. Next time anyone asks, flash them with this piece of scientificry!

If the soul doesn't exist, or is not separate from the body, is there any way for the consciousness to move from one body to the next though? While one can imagine, as you suggest, the same mind being "rebuilt" after an eternity or two, would it then be the same mind, or just a similar copy?

I actually took an hour or so to look around for this, first time you posted (then I kind of forgot about it, sorry!). At first I thought it was some kind of ball lightning. But then I looked closer, and it doesn't really look like any lightning I've seen before. It actually reminds me more of the old spiritual seance photos from way back. One kind of lightning that comes close is something called ribbon lightning. http://en.wikipedia....ibbon_lightning It's not THAT close in resemblance, and it's probably not caused by the same things, but it might be a place to start. Edit: The alien who posted while I was typing is probably right. The lack of colour in the photo is a problem.

I was using the space probe merely as an example, as it was the first that came to mind. The idea you're proposing was used by Asimov in his Robot series (chronologically the early ones according to Wikipedia). And indeed, his views were the same as yours, that it would "end the suffering" so to speak. I would guess the effect wouldn't be that dramatic, but it would definitely be a step forward, building machines that can make better copies of themselves. And I would guess it's somewhat related to the development of artificial intelligence? In the link I posted above, scroll down to "Prospects for Implementation" to get a few ideas.